The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended three weeks--and
three events--that represented the political and emotional peak of the
modern civil rights movement. On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some
600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They
got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state
and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove
them back into Selma. Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr.,
led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. Then civil rights leaders sought
court protection for a third, full-scale march from Selma to the state
capitol in Montgomery. Federal District Court Judge
Frank M. Johnson, Jr., weighed the right of mobility against the right
to march and ruled in favor of the demonstrators. "The law is clear that
the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may
be exercised in large groups...," said Judge Johnson, "and these rights
may be exercised by marching, even along public highways." On Sunday,
March 21, about 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles
a day and sleeping in fields. By the time they reached the capitol on
Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000-strong. Less than five months after
the last of the three marches, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting
Rights Act of 1965--the best possible redress of grievances.

In 1996 the Selma-to-Montgomery
National Historic Trail was created by Congress under the National
Trails System Act of 1968. Like other "historic" trails covered
in the legislation, the Alabama trail is an original route of national
significance in American history. An inter-agency panel of experts
recommended, and the Secretary of Transportation designated the
trail an "All-American Road"--a road that has national significance,
cannot be replicated, and is a destination unto itself. This designation
is the highest tribute a road can receive under the Federal
Highway Administration's National Scenic Byways Program, created
by the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991.